Modismo del Dia 31 de agosto de 2007

“Castillos en el aire” literally translates as “Castles in the air”. Two equivalents in English are: “Pie in the sky” and “pipe dream”.

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 28, 2007

“Caerle a uno como un balde de agua fria” literally translates to “To fall on someone like a pail of cold water”. The equivalent colloquial phrase in English is “To hit someone like a ton of bricks”.

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 27, 2007

“Armar una ensalada” literally translates to “To stir up a salad”. The colloquial meaning is “to make a mess”.

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 21, 2007

“En menos que canta un gallo” literally translates to “In less than a cock sings (crows)”.  In English we would say “In a flash”. The British might say “Before you can say Jack Robinson”. My favorite equivalent colloquialism is “In a New York minute”.

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 10, 2007

Many Spanish idioms have an identical counterpart in English. Here are two:

“Estar en el septimo cielo”  means “To be in seventh heaven”

“Mover cielo y tierra” translates to “To move heaven and earth”

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 9, 2007

“Tuetano”, which means “marrow” is used to provide emphasis, as in “Calado hasta los tuetanos” which literally means “To be soaked to the marrow”. In English we use the marrow casing for our version: “To be soaked to the bone”. “Hasta los tuetanos” means “through and through”, so if you are “madly in love” or “heads over heels in love” you can say “enamorado hasta los tuetanos”.

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 8, 2007

“Un humor de perros” literally means “A mood of dogs”. The colloquial translation is “A lousy mood”. Another animal related idiom is “No es moco de pavo” , the literal translation of which doesn’t sound too attractive in English: “It is not turkey snot”. The idiomatic meaning is “It’s no trifle” or “It’s no small matter”.

Modismo del Dia 7 de Agosto de 2007

“Con esos bueyes hay que arar” literally translates to “With those oxen you must plow”. The idiomatic meaning is not hard to guess: “One must make do with what one has”. Here’s another animal based saying: “Como quitarle un pelo a un gato” means “Like pulling one hair off of a cat”. In English we’d say “Like a drop in the bucket”.

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 6, 2007

Here’s a euphemism for “going to the bathroom”: “Ir a donde el rey va solo”, which literally means “To go where the king goes alone”. In English the ladies say “To go powder one’s nose”. Men often say “I have to go see a man about a horse”.

“Se lo ponen como a Felipe II” literally means “They serve it to him as they would to Phillip the Second”.  The equivalent in English would be “He gets everything handed to him on a plate”.

Spanish Idiom of the Day August 3, 2007

In the always dangerous category of nationalities, here are two colloquial terms.

“Cabeza de turco” literally means “Turk’s head”. Idiomatically it means “scapegoat” or “fall guy”.

“Llave inglesa’” or “English key” means “monkey wrench”.